LSD Docs/LSD Docs.iso/FILEZ/lsd15.dms/lsd15.adf/Imagine.Update.pp/Imagine.Update

Text File | 1991-02-19 | 36KB | 711 lines

                           CHANGES REPORT

                          FOR IMAGINE V.1.1

                       PRESENTED BY BEERMACHT


First and foremost we want to thank you for helping us in the last few
months.  There have been trying moments for everyone and we hope that this
version of the software will make things a bit easier on all of us.

There was a bug in the software in the rendering engine and another bug in
some of the objects when they were grouped together and then moved in the
stage.  We have fixed these bugs and have been beating this version to the
limits that we could.  You will be the final judge and as always we look
forward to any new problems that you might encounter.

IMPORTANT:  Please take the time to make sure that you have the bug isolated;
it doesn't do us or you any good if you don't really have a handle on what is
wrong.  Once you get the bug cornered (and we don't think that you will find
any), then write the process that led to the bug down on paper and drop us a
note telling us what you have found.  WE promise to look into it, and if it
is indeed a bug we will whack it as fast as we can.

The first bug:  in the rendering engine we found that at certain times the
triangles would become flipped.  This would make certain kinds of objects
look as though they have big white triangles or big holes.  It does not do
this anymore.  You may have not noticed this unless you were making lots of
different objects that had few triangles and were large in size.  Never-the-
less, it is fixed and your pictures should look much nicer.

The second bug: In the stage editor if you moved a group of objects, from
time to time it might seem as though there were situations that would
cause the objects to seperate from each other.  This too has been fixed.
There were several other bugs, mostly silly things that we didn't catch
the first time around; they were in total not very important and none of
them really made much of a difference in final product.

We have also included several new features.  These features are herein
explained.  If you have any questions please give us a call and we will
do our best to shed the light, as they say in the movies.

SO LET'S GET GOING......

WHATS NEW.

If this is your first pass at Imagine some of what was said above will seem
a bit confusing; we thought it important that you know there have been a
pair of revisions before this version of the software.  You have the most
up-to-date version that we have made as of Feb. 21st 1991.

There have been no additions or deletions in the FORMS EDITOR.

The DETAIL EDITOR:

The first menu, PROJECT.  Has one new item, RECONFIG.  Several people
who use the various features of the Imagine.Config file have let us know
that they want the ability to change the congfig file without having to
quit the program to make these changes work with Imagine.  You can now
push Imagine to the background and launch your text editor, make the changes
to the Imagine.Config that you desire to make,  then save the new config file.
When you return to IMAGINE simply pull down the Project menu and select
RECONFIG.  The changes that you have made to the Config file will now be
read by Imagine and will be in effect.

No changes to the Display menu.

No changes to the Object Menu

In the Mode Menu we have made the use of Hide Points, function just like
the other selections.  In the past you had to hide points with a drag
box and you could only do this once.  Now Hide Points is a mode that you
enter, much like Add Face or Add Lines or Add Points.  You choose Hide
Points  and the pick method that you want, i.e. (Click, Drag Box or Lasso).
You hide the points that you wish to hide; once those points have been
hidden you can now go to any other point or face manipulation mode. You
can not bring back any hidden points until you return to object mode.
Simply put, if you want to drag a few points around and there are others
that are getting in your way, enter hide point mode, hide the points that
are offending you or are getting in your way, now go into drag points mode.


FUNCTIONS

In the function menu there are several new features.

Quickdraw All, Pick and None.  In the attributes menu you can make an
object FASTdraw.  This is very handy when you have objects that have many
points and faces, The redraw time is much quicker when you have this feature
turned on.  The problem has been that if you have many objects that you want
to be quickdrawn you would have to look at each object's attributes and
select fastdraw To say the least, this can and would be a real pain.
If you pick an object, i.e. turn it blue, and select QuickDraw Pick from
the functions menu, you will see that the object is now a box.  If you want
all the objects on the screen to be quickdrawn then select from the functions
menu the QuickDraw All option.  To reverse the process use the Quickdraw
None option to make all objects show their real image.

Cycle Setup and Cycle Shuffle.

THe cycle editor has caused a few problems for some in making smooth
movements when you have many objects in a group.  Also, many have found that
it is difficult to set the Z axis and size of these axes to the proper
settings.

Take the case of an arm; it has the hand, forearm and upper arm and shoulder.
The entire set of objects have a set way that they should be grouped, and in
most cases this arm will be grouped to a torso.

THe proper way to group this set of objects is to first group the hand to
the forearm, with the forearm as the parent.  Group the forearm to the
upper arm with the upper arm as the parent, and finally the upper arm to the
shoulder with the shoulder as the parent.  If you saved this set of
objects as "arm" and then loaded this group as a cycle object, you would see
that the object is working as it should. The problem however might be
that the objects might come apart or get too big as you move the skeleton
around in order to make a cycle.

THe reason for this is that the Z axis of each object needs to be as big
as the object.  The Z axis controls the size of the object when used in the
cycle editor.  This can get to be a real bore to set all of these things.

We have eliminated some of this with these two new functions.

You will still have to group the objects as we have stated in the case of
the arm.  Once you are sure that the object is grouped in the proper manner
you can select the menu item Cycle Setup.  You do this by being in Group
mode and selecting the entire group by clicking on the highest parent
object, in this case the shoulder.  All objects will be blue.
Choose Cycle Setup.  There will be a an instant where the object will
blink and you will not notice very much.  A closer look however will
show you that the Z axis of each object is pointing in the direction of
its immediate parent.  Also you will notice that the Z axis has been
stretched the length of the object.

You have set what we will call the master object setup.

Save this object as "master" or some other name that denotes that this is
the first and master object group of a series of objects.  Save this object
to the disk of your choice.

THe next thing that we need to do is move the arm parts like we might like
to do in an animation.  Assume for the moment that we want the arm to
bend at the elbow and then return to its normal position.  The only real
key cell would be the process of the hand and the forearm moving up to
meet the shoulder and then returning to a fully extended form.

You could do this action in the Cycle editor or you can now move the first
group of the master group, the forearm and hand.  While still being in
group mode you select the forearm group which includes the forearm and
the hand.  Now select rotate, and rotate on the axis that would cause the
forearm to look as though it had traveled like an arm bending.

Now that you have this bent arm, choose the entire group and select from
the functions menu, Cycle Shuffle.

This feature makes sure that the objects are indeed still in line and have
the proper orientation to the parent object. If you have moved something
outside of a normal movement you might see that the software sets the
objects in what will appear to be a weird position.  However this is the
position that is correct for the movement capabilities of the cycle
editor.  You may have to reset the movements or do other rotations to
certain objects to get the effect that you want.

Once you have the object set the way you want it to look after choosing the
Cycle Shuffle option, save this object as "master.2" or some other name that
will tell you that this is the second object in line to the master object.
The reason for this is that you might want to do several movememnts and you
need to keep track of the order that you want them loaded into the cycle
editor.

Make sure that you save this new object with the new name.  We have now two
objects, one a master and the second a key cell object.

The purpose for all of this is that we tried making a human form once, piece
by piece, limb by limb.  When we tried to make the objects come into cycle
we found that it was very hard to get at all of the objects and the separate
groups to make the movements that we wanted to make.  By doing this in the
detail editor we gained two features.  The first was that we could see the
object in its new position instead of the skeleton and we could make sure
that all of the objects lined up as they should before we entered the
cycle editor.

There are a couple of other features to discuss in the Detail Editor; however
let us finish with the cycle objects first.

CYCLE EDITOR.

In the detail editor we made an arm from various objects and then grouped
them in such a way that they would act like an arm.  We saved this group
twice, once as a "master" object and secondly as a "master.2".

You probably know that the cycle editor will let you load cycles under
the object menu sub item load.  We could now load the arm using this
menu item.  We would load "master".  The software would tell us that this is
indeed not a cycle object.  It would also ask us if we wanted it converted.
We would of course select yes.  After a brief pause the skeleton would be
created for the arm and we would see in the perspective window that the arm
was indeed in the extended position.

Now we need to decide how many cells we are going to have in this cycle.
For the sake of simplicity we have decided that there should be 10 cells.
Cell number 5 will be our first key cell.  So choose right amiga c and type
in the number 5.  You will now be at cell five and it is of course a key
cell because it has an asterisk in the menu bar after the word Cell 5*.  The
problem is that it is still the arm in the full extended position.

Remember that we have already saved the second or next position of this
cycle in the detail editor  as "master.2".  In the CELL MENU of the cycle
editor is a new option called Load Pose.  Select this option and you will
see a file requester that will allow you to find and load the master.2
group into the cycle editor.  You have now loaded the first key cell group
into the CYCLE EDITOR.  You will see that the skeleton of polygons has
been bent to be an arm that has been folded at the elbow, just as we made
it in the detail editor.  The last key cell is the 10th cell, so choose
right amiga c and type in 10.  From the cell menu choose copy from, when the
requester appears choose 0 for the number.  Now do make from the animate
menu and you should soon have an animation of an arm bending at the elbow
and moving back to a fully extended position.

By using this new feature you can now create some very subtle and lifelike
movements of human or other than human objects. Many of you will still
prefer to use the other method of making the skeleton and assigning objects
to the various parts.  Whatever method you choose, you now have more
power at your fingertips.

BACK TO THE DETAIL EDITOR.

There are some new features in the attributes option.

Add a sphere and select it.

Choose attributes .

There are two new features  Bright and Light

If you make an object bright, you are telling the software that you don't
want any shadows or shading for this object.  Many people have used this
feature to make windows in buildings at nite time.  Others have used this
feature for numerous situations. Honestly we omitted it from Imagine
thinking that no one ever used this feature in Turbo Silver; we goofed and
so we put it back in.  Nuff said.

We also decided that we should give objects the ability to be lights.
If you click on this option you will see basiclly the same requester that
you have seen when you have added a light in the stage editor.  Make the
choices that you want and now you have an object that is a light source.

Something that has confused some folks:  When you want to make an object
that is extruded along a path, you must make that path with first an axis and
then add points or lines to that axis to create the path that you want the
object of your choice to extrude along.  If you use axis and them make closed
or open path, the system will tell you that there is an illegal value in the
path that you want to use.  Lesson to be learned: paths for extrusion should
be axis and points, not just axis alone.

The last feature that we have included is in the attributes requester under
the brush selection.  You can now place a series of brushes down on a object
and have a series of pictures be animated on that object as you are making
an animation with that object in the stage.  A simple example of this would
be, consider that you have made a televison or monitor that is sitting on a
desk.  You want to make a scene of a computer workstation.  You could fly
the camera around and zoom in or out in the stage, but the scene is going to
be a bit boring without any other life in the scene.  Now you can make a
series of images cycle on the face of the tv or monitor, making it look as
though something were going on inside the monitor. This is an example of an
animation inside of another animation.

There is only one caveat: you must have this series of pictures numbered in
a very specific manner.  If you have ever gone inside the directory where
your final pictures are stored after you make a rendering, you will see that
we have adopted the system of pic.0000.  Pic denotes picture and the four
following numbers are for the number of the cell that they represent.

Having the ball still selected, choose brush.  You will have to find a
picture to choose; any picture for this example will do.  All we want to do
is look at the requester for the moment.  In order to get here we had to
give the brush requester a brush to load.  This may not be (and in most cases
when you want to use serial brush it won't be) the brush that we are going to
use.

For the moment look at the requester; at the top is the name of the brush.
Down a few lines under the Type and Method check boxes you will see,  Repeat
and Mirror.  The major use of these functions will be when you want a brush
to be repeated on the ground and also if you want the brush mirored as it is
repeated. These function should be self explanatory.  If not, add a ground,
wrap a brush on it, and choose repeat and mirror. Render the ground and you
will see the results.

Also note that there is a new function called Full scale value. The number
in the box is 255; this means that if you use a filter map, the color white
will completely dissipate from view.  This is great for doing fog and smoke
and other things where you want a complete dissipation of the color white.
In the past, this value was set at 244; this made the filter brush never
completely dissipate.  ALso in the past you could not control this variable.
Now you can.

This brings us to the last value, the MAX Sequence # box.  Let us review
first: we want to put a series of pictures on an object,  and we want these
pictures to animate.  If you made an animation of a jet flying by and you
did this in say 20 cells, you would have in the pix directory of that
subproject a series of pictures that start with pic.0001 and go to pic.0020.
In order to get these pictures to animate on the object in question, we would
first have to tell the requester at the top that we really wanted to load
pictures from directory pix and that the information before the period of
the pic files was the word pic.  You could of course use any set or series
of pictures to wrap; the only factor is that they be in the name format of
pic.0000 through whatever the last picture that you have.  In our example
we have said that we have 20 pictures.  So down in the Max Sequence # box we
would type in the following number 0020.  In the top of the requester it
might say.... FILENAME jets.imp/1.pix/pic
Jets.imp is the subproject name, 1.pix is the pix file name and pic is the
actual name of the picture before the period.  You don't have to include the
period, we will assume that for you.  The only other thing that you need to
make sure of is that the max sequence number is valid; if you only have 10
pictures and you put in the number 0011 it will only read to 0010.
The best way to test this is to make a simple animation and then wrap those
pictures to a flat object in another animation.

You can think of this as sort of an anim brush function, except that it
only works with images that have been serialized.  It might sound a bit
difficult but after the first time through you will see that it is a snap.


So that does it for the cycle and detail editors, and as we said before there
have been no changes to the forms editor.

The almost last place we have to go is the Stage Editor.  In the stage we
have added a few new features that make life real easy.

AMIGA 7,8,9...
THese new hot keys and their functions will help you make motions and
rotations as well as sizing of objects a real breeze.

First things first.... In the past if you wanted an object to be someplace
else that was not following a path, you had to edit the channel that related
to position. You had to break the bar up among the cells where you want the
object to end up. In a sense you had to decide the cell which you wanted to
move to and then you had to go back to the stage and tell the stage that you
wanted to go to a certain cell and then you had to move that object to that
certain place that you wanted it to be.  This process was long and somewhat
tedious, especially if you had several objects that you wanted to move
either independently or in unison.  We have a new way to do this.

When you go into the stage, you will see 3 new items under the object menu.
They are Position Bar, Alignment Bar and Size Bar.  They have Amiga-7 for
Position, Amiga-8 for Alignment and Amiga-9 for Size.

So here is the deal.  You want this ball to move from ground 0 to someplace
above ground zero and then return to ground zero.  You would have had to
bust up the position bar a couple of times to do this.  Let's also say that we
want all this to happen in a 20 cell animation.

Ok no problem, you first decide that you want the ball to be at its last
highest point above 0 by cell 10, so do a right amiga c and move to cell 10
by typing 10 into the requester.  When you get to cell 10 you will see that
the ball is still in the same place.  Select it with the mouse, i.e. turn it
blue, hit the m key and the object will turn orange.  Now just move it real
time to the highest point that you want.  Deselect the object by hitting the
space bar.  It is now blue, and you should do the Right amiga 7 keystroke.
If you go to the action editor and look at this actor, you will see that the
actions that you have just done have broken the green bar up.  You have
interactively caused the bar to be edited.  You could also have rotated the
sphere something less than 180 degress and done a Right Amiga 8 for rotation
set.  You could have also scaled the ball and have done the Right Amiga 9
for set size.

Is this easy or what?  Now for most of the things that you are going to do
that have to do with straight moves that don't require a path to follow, you
will be able to do them real time and in a true sense create interactive key
cell tween points.

There are no real restrictions with these new features other than the
rotation command.  Be careful when you rotate things; if you go to far, the
rotation may go the other way.  The software always wants to go to its new
postion or alignment by the quickest means; you know the ole, the shortest
distance between any two points is always a straight line.

You can still enter the action editor and make whatever changes that you
want. This interactive situation will and should make animations even
easier.

Under the size bar is a new item called..... Show path length, you can use
the Right Amiga P hot key to use it.  You do this by first selecting the
path in question, a path that you made or loaded into the stage.  If you
then do Right Amiga P it will tell you the length of the path in pixels.
So what, and why is this important?  Well it isn't if you never intend to
use the new feature of the Action editor called Velocity.

Several users have asked for the feature called, Ease IN and Ease Out.  This
is used in several 2D paint programs because it's fairly easy to do when you
are just moving pixels around.   Another set of people said that they wanted
cars that they made to accelerate and decelerate like real cars do.  They
wanted planes to have real take off speeds and landing speeds.  You probably
get the idea that people wanted more than what we had.  Well for all those
that want these features, we now have them.

It is first assumed that you have an object that is following a path or is
going to follow a path.

You must enter the Action editor and in most cases delete the position bar
for the object that you want to have velocity applied to.  Now add back a
position bar.  When the requester asks you if this is Tween or Follow path,
select follow path.

As you have done in the past tutorials of the software, type in the name of
the path that you want to follow and hit the return key.

Now look at the next four options. They are:

AC ACCELERATION frames
Starting Speed (units/frames)
DE Deceleration Frames
Ending Speed (units/Frames

Simply put, an object must have a speed, that is distance traveled in a
certain number of cells.  If you have a path that is 200 units in length and
have 20 cells that it must travel to get from one end to the other, then
you should say that the speed of this object is 20 units per frame.

The constant speed of that path is 20UPF.

THe problem is that objects don't just start out at this speed nor do they
come to rest abruptly.  If you have a car that is going on this path, you
would want the car to speed up from a stop and get to the speed of the path,
then slow down when it was coming to a halt.

For the purpose of this tutorial we want our car to get to speed by cell 5
and we want it slow down by cell 15 and come to a complete stop.  You might
type in the following numbers in the four slots.

Acceleration frames 5
Starting speed 22
Deceleration frames 5
Ending speed 0

This means that our make believe car would speed up from dead stop for 5
cells, reach its speed limit by cell 6, travel that speed for 10 cells and
then begin to slow down at cell 15 and come once again to a complete stop by
cell 20.  This is for all intents and purposes Velocity.  It can also be
used for the simple task of Ease in and Ease out.

The only real concept that you need to grasp here is the fact that you
should use the size bar to figure out the amount of movement that the object
is going to travel if no velocity were going to be applied.

As with any feature or function in Imagine, the key to a complete
understanding is to use the feature or function.  Experiment, take a chance
and do it wrong.  If the example we have given here doesn't click right
away, play with the software and you will make progress. Promise.  We have
noticed in the last several months that those people who have the most
problem with the software are those who either have a deep bias from the use
of another product or who have a low frustration point for complicated
software.  We are somewhat embarrassed to say the we find new things to do
with IMAGINE almost daily, as well we find different ways to solve problems
from you.  You tell us the problem and we probably have a way to solve the
problem.  That is why we offer free service; just call and ask for tech
support at 612 566 0221.  We are there from 9 CST to 4 CST.

Last couple of items that we need to cover before you can get back to it
are:

ROTATE the FX
Camo the new Texture
Imagine.config

It has become obvious to us that many have found it just too much trouble to
rotate an object even with the addition in the stage of Right Amiga 8, or
alignment bar.

With this revision of the software we have included the FX called rotate.
You apply it to an object as you would any other effect.  The options are as
follows:

Start and end frame
X axis, y axis and z axis

These boxes can be checked one at a time or any combination of two or all
three.

Degrees is as you would expect, the amount that you want the object to
rotate.  A 1/2 rotation would be 180 degrees, a two time rotation would be
720 degrees and so on and so forth.  To get something to rotate 5 times in
one, two or three axis, just multiply 5 times 360 and then place the result
of that calculation in the degrees box.

It couldn't be any simpler, right.

TEXTURES

We have included with this version of Imagine another very useful texture.
We call it camo, short for camouflage.
Don't be fooled by the name: of course you can make great patterns for tanks
and planes but you can with some experimentation make other stunning effects
with this texture combined with others.

A word on textures.  We have given you the ability to use more than one
texture on an object at a time.  In fact you can have four at once.  Use this
in your journeys through Imagine to create patterns and surfaces that really
stand out.  We can't really give you any examples because there are so many
variables that it is mind bending to think of the possibilites. Once again
it's up to you to play with these tools and create your own reality.

Now back to Camo.

There are only three basic values that you need to deal with.

Avg (average) spot size
Random Seed
Colors R, G and B 1 - 4

Average spot size.  If you have a sphere that is 150 units in size, try
making your avg spot size 1/4 or about 40 units.  Use any random seed that
you want; we always use 123.  Colors are of course up to you,  For your
first time, try making 1 0,0,0. 2 255, 255, 255. 3 255, 0,0 and 4 0,255,255.

This should give you a ball that is black, white, red and light blue.  From
here you can get as crazy or a subtle as you want.  Try it, looks really very
neat.  If you don't have enough colors for what you want, try putting another
camo on the same object and do whatever you want.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

IMAGINE CONFIG

In the following we are going to explain each feature of the config file and
its meaning.  You change any of these numbers with a text editor of your
choice.  The only thing that yo have to remember is that you must always
save the file as Imagine.config.

By way of explanation, you should know that the Imagine.Config file is the
file that Imagine reads when it loads into the computer's memory.  It reads
this file and make decisions about how to set the software up.

With the config file you can set Interlace, decide on which text editor to
launch when you edit a movie file, or even the colors of the objects and
points as well as almost all of the other features of the software.  You
also have the ability to configure special software function keys.  You may
from time to time find that you use certain aspects of the software several
times in one editor or another.  You might begin each session of the detail
editor by adding an axis; you can, if you like, assign a hot key to this
function of adding an axis.

IMAGINE.CONFIG
PPTH ""   this means that the Imagine.pic file is in the same directory as
Imagine the software was loaded from.

EDIT :C:ed" this tells the software that when you decide to edit the movie
file in the Project Editor that you want to use the ED editor and it can be
found in the C directory.  You can of course use any editor that you want
and it can be in any directory that you establish.

LOAD is either T (true) or F (false): if Load is True then all of the modules
of Imagine will load at once.  If Load is False then only one module of the
software will load at a time.  This will save some memory for those of you
who have limitied memory avialable to your computer.  If you have 3 megs or
more we suggest that you leave Load T (true).  If you have an Amiga 500 with
one meg of memory, it would be wise to make Load F (false)

LACE is either T (true) or F (false).  If True then the software will run in
interlace, if False it will run in non-interlace.  Because you can adjust
the colors of the system, most will find that interlace will be fine and not
have too much interlace flicker.  If you don't like the flicker then make
LACE F (false),  This will make the system run in non-interlace.  You will
also save some memory doing this.  One caution is that things tend to get
rather chunky when in NON-INTERLACE.  The points of objects look like buicks
in the driveway.

GRON is either T or F and either turns on the grid background or turns it
off.  You can turn it on or off from inside the software as well.

BWLN is either T or F and does the following:  If you render something in
B&W mode from the project modify requester, you will have the system
draw lines for you on the objects at the intersection of all triangles if
the status is True. If you have the F value plugged in, the lines will not
be drawn.

COLN is the same as BWLN except that COLN stands for Color Shade mode.

WARN is either T (true ) or F (false).  For those of you who have mastered
the program, you might not want to be asked if you really want to quit or if
you can exit this editor without making changes.  If you make WARN T (true)
the software will ask you if you want to quit and so forth; if you make it F
(false) you will not be prompted when you quit an editor.

BWLC is a bit different. It does not have a True or False value; it has a hex
number applied to it.  Hex numbers are the same as real numbers except that
we have more symbols that are single characters.  The number 10 is the letter
A, 11 is B and so forth.  The value that you put into this area is the color
that the lines will be in the B&W shade mode of rendering.  If you like the
idea of having red lines on your B&W shaded picture you might use the value
of F00.  This is the value for Bright Red. For Bright Blue it would be 00F.

COLC is just the same as BWLC except that it applies to the lines in the
Color Shade mode.

STAR is the value of the color for the stars that are found in the stage
editor.  The default value is set to middle gray or 888.  You could use the
stars to be any color that you want. Values much over AAA begin to just look
like little pin holes; they also really stand out.  Of course you could make
red or blue or whatever color stars that you want.  Just remember that the
value is a three digit HEX number with F being the highest number and 0
being the lowest.  0=0 and F=16.

COLO is the value that you want to use for the zero color.  In most cases
zero color is the color that you use when you want to use the GENLOCK
feature of either the software or your hardware genlock. A value of 000 is
black, a value of FFF would be white.  Any number you choose will be color
zero.

BGRD is the color of the background; the default value is Light gray or 555.

FGRD is the color of the edge of the screen; it is set to CCC or almost
white.

PNTS is the color of the points; they are white and are FFF

SPNT Selected point color default is 6F6

SPPT Selected picked point is FF6 or blue.

PPNT is for picked point color, default is F66

SLCT Selected edge color, default is F80

PICK is for the picked edge color; the default is 66F

PRNT is for the color of the lines shown when a set of objects are grouped.
The default is F6F

SPCK is for the selected picked edge; the default is C6F

CUBE  is the color of the bounding cube for objects that are fastdrawn from
the attributes menu or when they are moved in real time. The default is FC0.

BAND is the color of the rubberband that you see when you drag points; the
default is fC0

GRID is the color of the grid itself; the default is 666.

NUMS is the number of screens to use when making a movie and when showing a
movie.  3 is the default; the more screens the more memory used, the
less screens the slower the animation is probably going to be.  We have
set it at 3 and think that this is probably optimum.  You can of course mess
around with the value.  You might get some better results.

RSDP is set to 8.  THis is the amount of reflections that you will see when
two mirrors are facing each other or objects that have high reflectivity are
next to each other.  Values much higher than 9 get real time consuming.  We
have set the value of 8 as default; we think that in HAM this is the best
value and the most reasonable trace time.  In 24 bit mode things can get
better because you have more pixels and more colors.  Try 9 if you like but
if it goes much over 9 we know it will take a long time to trace for not too
much in the way of payoff in picture quality.  For those who don't care
about recursion, move the number to 4 and the trace time gets better yet.

EDLE is the value that is given to the anti-aliasing capabilities of the
software: the higher the number the more effort given to smoothing out the
jaggies, the less the number the less the effort.  35 seems to be rather
nice; try higher values if you like but trace times go up as well.

GSIZ is the default size of the grid. The default is 20; set it to whatever
you want or leave it alone.

SCRL is the amount the screen scrolls when you hit the cursor keys on
the keyboard.  The default value is .25 or 1/4 of the screen.  You can
increase this number to 1 and the whole screen will move one screen in the
direction of the cursor key that you depressed.  .12 would be 1/8 and so
forth.  Adjust this value to your liking.  Remember that you can do these
things on the fly by editing the value and then doing reconfig from the
editor that you are in.  You should also notice that there is a 0 in front of
the . in the value.  This denotes that you can have the screen move 1.5
screens per depression of the cursor key.

The next set of keys relate to first a particular editor and then the menus
of that editor.  FD means Function key in the Detail editor, the next two
numbers tell you which Function key. 01 is the first function key. On the
Amiga keybaord 0 is = to F1.  The next three numbers tell you what will
happen when the Function Key is depressed.  The first digit is the Menu
number, menus start from 1 on the far left to whatever number is the last
menu item on the right.  The second number is which menu item in that menu;
1 is the first item and the numbers go to 9 for the next item. The last
digit is the submenu item in the chosen menu.  An example of this is

FD07 = Function key 7, Value 390

This means that when you are in the Detail editor; if you depress the F7 key
you will get the attributes requester. You can configure  any item or menu
by just counting the menus from left to right and subitems from top to bottom.

You can also use shifted function keys by making the number above 10; FD11
would be shifted function key F1.  This means that you have 20 function or
HOT KEYS for any editor that allows the use of Hot Keys: these are DETAIL,
FORMS, CYCLE, STAGE.  The action editor can not use function keys.

FD means Detail Editor
FC means Cycle Editor
FS means Stage Editor
FF means Forms Editor

The final set of values in this config file is the Pset value.
The Pset values set the values in the modify requester for the project menu.
Read each of them; they are very straightforward.  You can add as many as
you like.  We have touched on those values that we think you will probably
use; you can create any size that you like.